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Sounds like an impractical strategy: how can they possibly keep others out? In Manhattan CVS is up against it because Walgreens is at least as big and has acquired the local ubiquitous Duane Reade chain (named for parallel streets in lower Manhattan) and has some really souped up locations like that one at school and Washington Sts in Boston. But the proliferation of bank branches, chain drugstores, chain coffee and fast food places etc seems much more than ever before. Nothing new about chain stores- A&P got going in the 1920s I guess - but the loss of local retailers is kind of jarring. Hard to think now of even one retailer with a Boston identity where 30 and more years ago there were so many- all the local dept store names, jewelers and sporting goods and building supplies and so on. Stoddards, Temple Place, sold fine cutlery. Now it's a restaurant. Kennedys was a fixture in Summer St. Shreve's had distinctively Boston lines. Stowells had a jewel box of a store on Winter St. Bob Smiths, Franklin St, had all kinds of sporting goods. Lauriat's wasn't a great bookstore but it was very Boston. Bailey's--what a nice little operation, a few locations, not many, and your sundae spilling over the sides of the discreet parfait cup. Erlich's pipes and cigars on Tremont Street near the steaming kettle... Seems like so many of these local landmarks are being replaced by nothing much-- maybe a TD bank lobby. Lots of good new restaurants at least, where there were only worn out places like Dini's (known in the Ed King era for its Lobster à la King.) And the kettle survives--as a Starbucks. George Gloss's Brattle Books survived the urban renewal wiping out of Brattle Street, or Cornhill (not sure which of those streets it was on) and now thrives on West St. We need more local things! Maybe more of them in outlying areas like Davis Square, Coolidge Corner, Newton Centre, Jamaica Plain...

From what I could figure, there are about 40 CVS locations in NYC with the vast majority in mid-town with millions of residents. In my town of 25K, we have 4. Which municipality is over saturated?

BTW, no Walgreen's or Rite Aid in town but they do compete with Wegman's and Shaw's for pharmacy business and add Market Basket, BB&B for toiletries.

I always found it odd how at Coolidge Corner there are 2 CVS's, basically across the street from each other. And almost next to one of those and across the street from the other was a Brooks Pharmacy which became a Walgreens but then closed and is now becoming (yet another) bank.

I can believe that one or two flagship brand stores are there for marketing. Nike makes most of its money selling its shoes to other stores who then sell them to people. Same for a lot of the really fancy branded stores in Newbury St. that are pushing a brand that's generally sold in other stores.

What doesn't make sense to me is something like CVS having a bunch of loss-leading entire stores. CVS is a retailer, not a retail brand. You don't look on Amazon for CVS products. There's no way that all those stores in Manhattan are there to push the brand, they have to be making money. Is it hard to believe that really high rents are correlated with really high traffic, which translates into really high sales? I guess I'll have to look at the CVS and Walgreens annual reports.

You have to understand that stores like CVS and Walgreens (as examples) are not merely drug stores but nearly-all-purpose VARIETY stores. In such stores, you can also get groceries (both pre-packaged and ready-to-eat foods and beverages), electronics and computing equipment and devices, electrical parts and supplies, batteries of all types, apparel & linens of many types, shoe polishes and supplies + shoe laces, newspapers and magazines, books, sewing supplies, toys, office supplies and equipment (including printer toner and ink & paper reams), tools and hardware, eyeglasses and sunglases and related vision accessories and parts, photograph taking and processing (+ video & film processing too), kitchen items, toiletries and bathroom items, pet supplies, and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on . . . . . . ad infinitum.. They are a veritable universe of possibilities.

So it is not hard to understand that a CVS or Walgreens can have a goodly number of stores even in a single neighborhood or city/town and still make money with each of these locations . . . for they fulfuill so many many many many many of humanity's day-to-day needs and often at reasonable-enough prices (and they each have rewards cards, discount coupons, promotionals, et al to bring down the costs to you even further). And our fellow humans are very often inclined to shop at something very close to where they are situated daily or nearly daily (whether close to their home or their workplace or school or whatever) and hence to use stores like CVS and Walgreens as their nearly-all-purpose stores.

So hence this is why a CVS or Walgreens (for example) can have so many locations and even those within a reasonable-enough walk of one another. Because they are an all-purpose or nearly-all-purpose store (like miniaturized versions of Target, Walmart, Kmart, the former Woolworths, and the like). I wouldn't say that any of their locations are, as you put it, "loss-leading stores". They wouldn't open more stores than they can handle in any given area and make enough of a profit on. This is borne out by the reality that, occasionally, you'll see them close a certain location(s) if they deem that it is not worth having such stores situated too close to one another and hence have them all be profitable-enough locations.

Boston is not nearly as bad as NY when it comes to corporations. Unless your in the tourist hotspots of Boston it really isnt all that bad. Allston, Brighton, North End, East Boston are still very very local. And the suburbs have many noncorporations.

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